220 THE NEW LEADERSHIP PARADIGM ATTRIBUTION 221

salvaged the start-up schedule. Where the division missed the boat

was on our old chemical plating products business. I was so pre-

occupied with the new plant, I just didn't see the impact of

Mitsuhama in that business. Our volume in that business was re-

ally down. That was the major cause of our division's overall

shortfall. I just wish I had more time, or a more dependable mar-

keting manager of the plating products business. And I still think

our competitor is dumping below cost. I know I could have handled

that business if. . . "

At that, the door of the conference room opens. The grim voice of

the chairman beckons him into the room.

The premise of Part V of this volume is that the way employees think

influences the way they behave and perform in organizations. In this

chapter, we address the issue of how we mentally process information

about stimuli in our environments, especially how we tend to think

about other people. In Chapter 12 we will take up the topic of social

cognition, but before that, in this chapter, we address attributions, the

mental explanations or reasons people use to interpret past events.

Perceptions are subject to self-ser\'ing bias, the tendency for individ-

uals to take persona! responsibility for their successes, but to attribute

failures to external or situational causes. An attribution is a cognitive

evaluation that attempts to formulate an explanation for an event, such

as success or failure in an achievement-related task. These explanations

(causal attributions) form cognitive rationales that serve to guide fu-

ture actions. Attributions can be formulated about one's own perfor-

mance, or about the performance of another. For example, Ed arrives at

work 10 minutes late. As he arrives, his boss thinks, "He's too lazy to

get out of bed in the morning." Ed thinks, "Damn, why do we have so

many accidents on the freeway!" They both experience the same event

(Ed's late arrival), but they interpret it differently—they attribute the

event to different causes. Attribution theory is based on a human

thought process used to explain cause and effect.2

Weiner describes achievement behavior primarily in terms olpercep-

tions of ability, effort, task, difficulty, and luck. For example, when

people make internal attributions for success—that is, when they attri-

bute their success to their own ability and effort—they feel 2 greater

desire for achievement, experience higher job satisfaction, fee] higher

self-esteem, and set higher goals for themselves. Positive internal attri-

butions can be a powerful basis for effective work behaviors.

Antecedents of Attributions

Attributions are more likely to be made under certain conditions.

First, a failure is likely to induce a search for attributions, Wh; did the

failure occur? What is the cause? In managerial folklore, an

umuccess-ful outcome is often marked by a search for a scapegoat,

someone to blame for the failure. Second, attributions are more likely

when there is an inconsistency with a previous expectation. A

"surprise"is more likely to induce a search for "why" than would the

achievemeil or occurrence of an anticipated result.

Other antecedents are important in the formation of attributions. For

example, a manager typically pays attention to cues that indicate

whether a subordinate's performance is distinctive, consistent, irid con-

sensual.5 Distinctiveness refers to whether the performance occurred

on this task but not on other tasks. That is, was this an unusual or unique

outcome on this particular task? Consistency refers to whetherthe per-

formance-related behavior is congruent with other actions of the subor-

dinate. For example, if an employee has a regular habit of arriving late

to staff meetings, another late arrival would be consistent with that

employee's pattern of behavior. Consensus refers to the question of

whether other individuals behave in ways similar to the subordinate in a

similar situation,

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224 THE NEW LEADERSHIP PARADIGM ATTRIBUTION 225

employee would attribute more cause to external reasons. Consider

Mary, who attributes failure to external causes, in contrast to Betsy,

who, in the same situation, attributes success to her own effort:

Mary had a grim look on her face as she emergedfrom the classroom.

Betsy, her best friend, recognized the cause: "Bad grade, on the

exam?" she asked. She knew that Mary had expected to do well.

"Yes," replied Mary with a sigh. "I got a D. The test was just

not fair. In the first place, she just emphasized Chapter 12 too

much. She didn't tell us she was going to do that, and I hardly

studied it at all. And all the questions were so ambiguous. She just

doesn't know how to write a test! I'm really mad at her!" She

paused and then asked, "How did you do?"

Betsy was a little embarrassed. "I got an A," she replied. "I

really studied hard for this one."

What is the motivation behind self-serving bias? Why does it occur?

Is it deliberate? Three types of explanations have been suggested: (1)

motivational, (2) information processing, and (3) self-presentational.

The motivational explanation is based on the private concept of

self-esteem, or how an individual regards him- or herself. Most people

have a significant need to maintain and enhance their self-esteem.

Preserving self-esteem is important for psychological health.

Consequently, people tend to defend themselves from anything that has

negative implications for their self-esteem. For example, a task failure

might be construed as a threat to self-esteem.

According to the information-processing explanation, self-serving

bias occurs because of an imbalance in the logical processing of avail-

able information. A subordinate is fully aware of her own history. From

her viewpoint, the major difference in any task-oriented situation is the

situation. If something is different this time—if there has been a fail-

ure—then, from the employee's viewpoint, the major factors that have

changed are the circumstances surrounding the task, so her attention is

focused on these contextual circumstances. Not surprisingly, the atten-

i

tion focused on the external circumstances is transformed into

anexter-nal attribution of cause: "I failed because of external factors."

Both motivational and information-processing explanations for

self-serving bias entail unconscious, unwitting distortions of reality.

The bias is an actual perceptual bias, but the perceptions are sincere,

true, and private.

A third explanation, self-presentation, entails a conscious, inten-

tional distortion of causality. In self-presentation, an employee carries

out a strategy for managing the impressions she makes on others. The

premise is that individuals are highly concerned with winning approval

from, and avoiding disapproval of, significant others. Self-serving bias

arises when individuals act to manage the impressions they mate on

others by taking public credit for successes and denying personal re-

sponsibility for blameworthy acts.

These three explanations are not necessarily mutually exclusive. For

example, the self-presentation effect might be viewed as a secondstage

to the motivational effect. Individuals might originally experience

self-serving bias because of an internal motivation to preserve their own

self-esteem. Then, in attempts to enhance their esteem in the eyes of

others, the self-presentation effect will come into play as a second, now

public, stage. c

Natural Tendencies: Actor-Ohserver Differences

The attributions that subordinates make about themselves can differ

in nature from attributions that a manager might make about thosesame

subordinates, especially in a failure situation. The superior-subordinate

relationship can be regarded as a special case of actor-observer rela-

tionship, thus providing the potential for an actor-observer diffetence

phenomenon. The subordinate here is regarded as the actor who carries

out the achievement-related behavior, and the manager is the observer

who perceives and judges the behavior.

Research and personal experience show that actors and observers

often perceive the same events quite differently. That is, while a subor-

dinate (actor) is likely to make external attributions to explain a failure,

THE NEW LEADERSHIP PARADIGM

is the result of a lack of effort, she would tend to a.sk "why" questions

to probe for the cause of the failure.

There are two apparent motivations for using attribution-eliciting re-

quests. First, and most important, they provide an opportunity for man-

agers to confirm or disconfirm their own preliminary attributions.

Second, these requests also provide an opportunity for employees to

undertake a self-examination process. Generally, this attribution re-

quest strategy has the effect of evoking a wide range of attributions by

the subordinate employee and providing the manager with a greal deal

of useful information.

There are other connections between manager attributions and sub-

sequent verbal behavior. For example, manager attributions to causes

internal to the employee (such as lack of ability and effort) are associ-

ated with fewer positive reward statements and more punitive or cor-

rective statements directed at the employee. But if the manager

attributes failure to bad luck, he is more likely to use task direction as a

response, perhaps in an attempt to be task oriented and exert some

control over the situation. In contrast, if the failure is attributed to a

lack of cooperation from coworkers, the manager is likely to provide

offers of help and to engage in less punitive verbal behavior.

In summary, managers do not very often make overt verbal attribu-

tions when interacting with subordinate employees. Rather, they seem

to prefer to engage in attribution-eliciting behavior and have the subor-

dinates make the verbal attributions. The managers then assess the ve-

racity of the subordinates' attributions. Furthermore, managers

sometimes "soften" their initial strong attributions about employees

after face-to-face interactions with those employees. Gioia and Sims

discovered a pronounced shift in attributions more in favor of the

subordinate's point of view after managers had a chance to discuss the

reasons for poor performance with them.

•

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229

ATTRIBUTION

Attributions and Decision Behavior

Attributions can also influence managerial decision behavior about

a subordinate employee. For example, an employee might be offered

the opportunity to undergo training if his manager believes he isfailing

because of lack of ability. Or the employee might be reassigned lo ajob

that has requirements more closely suited to his ability.

Most of all, attributions play an important role in the decision to

award pay raises. Managers tend to become angry with employees to

whom they attribute lack of effort, and therefore recommend lover pay

raises for Ihosc employees. Another employee might actually perform

at the same level, but be given a higher raise because she "tried liarder."

Perhaps, like one of the authors, you can remember scoring the iiighest

on a high school examination, yet receiving a B on the report: card.

When queried, the teacher in this case replied, "It's too easy foi you—

you're not working hard enough!"

The decisions that managers make in response to employee behavior

are not always based on the objective facts of the situation, nor are they

necessarily based on the level of performance. Attributions can play an

important role in these determinations.

Employee Motivational Response

Finally, the bottom line for this analysis is the issue of employee

motivation and achievement response. The major purpose of trying

to understand attributions and behavior is to gain greater under-

standing about how managers can positively and effectively influ-

ence employees.

Perhaps one of the most critical distinctions in attributions is that

between internal attributions to lack of ability and internal attributions

to lack of effort. In both of these situations, the manager ascribes the

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228

232 THE NEW LEADERSHIP PARADIGM

(7) Focus on behavior, avoid emphasis on attitude and personality traits.

(8) Use critical incidents.

(9) Use contingent rewarding consequences for accomplishments.

The effective manager will recognize that perception plays an impor-

tant role that has the capacity to influence behavior. Attribution theory

provides a systematic way of understanding why people are especially

prone to have disagreements about problems or failures, When a man-

ager begins to understand that a subordinate's self-serving bias is a nat-

ural psychological phenomenon—and when a manager begins to

understand that there are natural psychological differences between the

ways people view failures—then the first step toward resolution has

been taken, consistent with the SLC leadership paradigm.

12

Schenftas alid Categdifies1

••

•

Notes

1. This chapter is adapted from previously published work by D. A. Gioia and H. P. Sims,

Jr. Sec particularly D, A. Gioia and H. P. Sims, Jr., "Self-Serving Bias and Actor-Observer

Differences in Organizations: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Applied Social Psychology

13-16 (1985): 547-63; H. P. Sims, Jr., and D. A. Oioia, "Performance Failure: Executive

Response to Self-Serving Bias," Business Horiions, January/February 1984,64-71,

2. T. R. Mitchell, S. 0. Green, and R. E, Wood, "An Attributional Model of Leadership and

the Poor Performing Subordinate: Development and Validation," Research in Organisational

Behavior 3 (1981): 197-234; D. A. Gioia and H. P. Sims, Jr., "Cognitive Behavior Connections:

Attribution and Verbal Behaviorin Leader-Subordinate Interactions," Organizational Behavior

and Human Decision Processes 37 (1986): 197-229.

3. B. Weiner, "A Cognitive (Attribution)-Emotion-Action Model of Motivated Behavior: An

Analysis of Judgements of Help Giving," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39

(1980): 186-200.

4. T. S. Bateman, O. R. Ferris, and S. Strauss, "The 'Why' Behind Individual Work

Performance," Management Review (October 1984): 71.

5. H. H. Kelley, "The Process of Causal Attribution," American Psychologist 28 (February

1973): 107-26.

6. Gioia and Sims, "Cognitive-Behavior Connections."

7. L. Ross, "The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution

Process," in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 10, ed. L. Berkowitz (New York:

Academic Press, 1977).

8. Gioia and Sims, "Cognitive-Behavior Connections."

9. Ibid.

"Sure, I can tell within two minutes," said George confidently.

George wax describing his interviewing style to Clyde, a grad-

uate student who was conducting research on selection of col-

lege graduates.

"But what's the purpose of (he interview?" asked Clyde, "I

thought you were supposed to ask the candidate about facts and

opinions that will help you come to a decision. Aren't you supposed

to get all the information in before you come to a conclusion?'

"Well," replied George, "technically that's the way it's sup-

posed to go. And, of course, our training tells us to go in that di-

rection. But I'll tell you the way it really is. When you've

interviewed as many college graduates as 1 have over the yet;s,

you develop a hunch or a sense by which you can tell almost ri$ht

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233